Lobbying World

• Emily Lenzner has joined SKDKnickerbocker as a managing director. She was the executive director of media relations for ABC News in Washington.

• J. Thomas Schieffer has joined Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld as senior counsel. Schieffer served as U.S. ambassador to Australia and then to Japan during the Bush administration. In 1989, Schieffer invested in the Texas Rangers Baseball Club with President George W. Bush and served as the team’s president from 1991 to 1999. He was elected at age 25 to the Texas State Legislature and made an unsuccessful bid for Texas’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2009.

• Mark Parkinson will join the American Healthcare Association as president after his term as governor of Kansas ends later this year. The Democrat will also head up the National Center for Assisted Living. Parkinson also has owned and managed several long-term healthcare facilities.

• Paul Atkins has joined Sphere Consulting as a senior partner. Atkins was a commissioner for the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2002 to 2008. Atkins served two terms on the commission and represented the agency at meetings of the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Economic Council, the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the World Economic Forum and the Transatlantic Business Dialogue.

• Stephen L. Sulzer has joined Manatt, Phelps & Phillips as a partner in the intellectual property group in the firm’s Washington office. He was at Connolly Bove Lodge & Hutz before coming to the firm. Sulzer has practiced patent law for 25 years as a private lawyer. He also spent five years at the International Trade Commission as an investigative attorney.